5 Title-Writing Lessons You Can Learn from Naked Beds

Darren Rowse over at Problogger is holding a Group Writing Project about writing killer titles for blogs.  Titles are the thing that make us want to read more, be it in a blog, a press release, email or newsletter. I’m entering his contest/project, and along the way, you’ll learn a thing or two about writing titles/headlines that get the attention of your reader.

Naked Bed? It's Not What You Think.

We’re bombarded with titles and headlines every day. It’s mind-spinning how much media we have access to. So how do you decide what to read? Chances are titles play a big part. Say you’re scanning the newspaper and you see a headline that says “Politician X and Dog Make Strange Bedfellows.” Hm? You’ll read on to find out what in the world it’s about. It may be just an article about a politician adopting a stray dog, but it caught your attention.

It’s the same things with blogs. Especially with so many people signed up for RSS feeds. If the title doesn’t catch their attention, they don’t click it to read the post.

Press releases and emails: ditto. You have very few words to make a good impression. Here’s an example. I had a PR client that sold headboards. We developed a campaign that raised a few eyebrows. “Is your bed naked?” was used in press releases, videos and articles. While the word “naked” brought to mind things of a, ahem, risque nature, the phrase “naked bed” actually referred to a bed without a headboard.

You can see that we took a clever concept and integrated it into our titles for press releases. Here are 5 lessons you can learn from this example to increase clicks, readership, exposure, whatever you’re looking for:

1. Ordinary is out. I detest headlines like “So and so announces new CEO to head the company.” Why do I need to read the article? I already know what I need to. Think beyond what you need to say to find a way to catch readers’ attention. Naked beds certainly does that.

2. What’s in it for me? As I’ve stressed before in previous posts, giving your reader a reason to read on is key. You need to show that you have information, resources or something to give away in your blog/newsletter/press release with just the 5-7 words in your title. Hard, but not impossible.

3. Words are the key. If you blog or do any kind of search engine optimization, you’re familiar with keywords. You know they help people and search engines find you better. I used to write really crappy blog titles, thinking I was being cute, and my husband would add keywords to them. Now I get it. Find the core of your post and use that as a base for finding keywords for your title.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. As Darren says in this post on writing killer titles, questions are good to draw people in. Take Wendy Piersall (Sparkplug CEO)’s post What is the Best Way to Start a Home Business Online? It’s simple, but it’s a question many people have, so using it as a title is effective.

5. Use your numbers. For some reason people like posts with numbers (i.e. 5 Lessons…10 Tips…Top 8 Reasons). Implement them in your blog to show that you have that number of concise points that are easy to read.

How do you use titles to draw more readers? Does implementing any of these lessons show you increased readership?